Friday, September 7, 2012

Alright, so I've been busy with school for the past 2 weeks and I've been taking all the notes I can for the classes I take. Basically what I plan to do, is post everything in this blog that i learn in my Chemical Engineering classes. For one, it'll be a great way for me to internalize what I have learned explaining it to you guys. Second reason for this is as a helper for anyone interested in what it's like to learn Chem E. Unfortunately I do not have have all my notes from my sophomore and junior year, but I remember enough to post some basics and explain what certain terms mean and how we use them. Also past classes actually add on to what previously learned so it will all be there anyways. Only basics I won't have notes for include mass balances, basic thermo (chemical equilibria class has everything we learned last year included. The thermo class itself was intro to using ideal gas law and equations of state and using steam tables), and some theory class that made almost no sense at all with the basic idea of idea of PV=RT where V is molar volume and most gasses behave as ideal gasses at low pressure...and we looked at a bunch of graphs on things like henry's law and other equations. Other than those things mentioned above, I'll either post scans of my notes if it involves alot of equation work, or I'll simply type out everything in a nice format. I'll also point out what books I use and anything I pick out from readings that would be nice to include as well. I hope you all enjoy what will come and any questions I can try to answer in the comments with my future content.

Basically these handbooks contain useful reference information and data and many of the calculations we do in class involve using these books to find certain data for creating models or getting certain coefficients for chemicals to plug into formulas we will use. If interested in being a Chem E then by all means having a hard copy of these books is recommended. Perry's book can also be found free on the web through some online book programs too like knovel (at least its free for me on campus, I never actually tried to access off campus...not sure if there is any sign-up fees or something).